Woonhuis, Keizersgracht 269

English translation

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Description

Introduction

CANAL HOUSE built in 1617 for Jan Cornelisz. Visscher. As a reference to the founder and because of the sculpture of a fisherman in the gable top formerly called 'De Visser'. The current appearance of the front facade dates from around 1809, when owner Pieter de Putter received permission to modify it. The interior contains more than thirty wallpapers set in panelling and painted on linen, distributed over four rooms, executed by Willem Uppink (1767-1849) and Antonie Elliger (1701-1781). In 1949, a major renovation took place for the benefit of the British Council according to a design by architect K.L. Sijmons (architectural office Zanstra, Giesen & Sijmons), whereby the arrangement of the apartment on the second and third storeys acquired an entirely distinctive character.

Description

Canal house with three bays wide cornice-topped facade and stoep in the right bay, consisting of a front house with basement, principal floor, three storeys, attic and garret, a middle section and rear house. Behind the cornice the gabled roof is visible which runs with the ridge parallel to the canal and perpendicular to the original roof. The front facade is built up from a plinth clad in natural stone at basement level, above which it is laid in stretcher bond with cut joints. The building profiles itself towards the street by means of the natural stone staircase projecting outside the building line leading to the basement in the left bay and the stoep to the principal floor, both equipped with a cast-iron railing with wood. The basement is accessible from the street side by a natural stone staircase. The piano nobile and the first storey have sash windows with glazing bars in the upper lights, the second storey six-light, the third storey casement windows with wide mullion. At the level of the attic in the middle bay a hoist door indicating the floor level of the attic, flanked by two bull's-eye windows. All window openings have natural stone windowsills and are crowned by lightly arched straight arches. Between the various storeys a small drip moulding is made by projecting the pointing joint. The natural stone plinth is closed at the top by a drip moulding under the windows of the principal floor. The facade is crowned by a main cornice the crown moulding of which is borne by four consoles, detailed with acanthus leaves and rosettes. The whitewashed rear facade of the front house is equipped with the same sash windows with large pane division and is crowned by a spout gable on shoulders. The rear facade of the rear house has a wooden underpui with casement doors and an extension on the left side matching in height. Above the underpui the two-bay wide facade is three storeys high, with sash windows and casement windows, crowned by a main cornice with Doric triglyph frieze and in the gabled roof a central roof dormer.

In the interior, directly behind the entrance door a corridor over the depth of the front house, which provides access to various (storage) rooms. One of the most striking details in the basement concerns the presence of a large tie beam in the front house, which runs in a slightly slanting line from the centre of the front facade to the centre of the rear facade, and is there set into the wall with a key stone, and is supported at two other visible locations by two cast-iron columns. Under the light well the kitchen, with simple tiles and wall cupboards, presumably largely dating from the construction time of the rear house.

In the rear house the so-called dining room with a series of wall paintings (Uppink, 1812) including representations of the country house of the De Putter family, "Hofwerk" on the Vecht near Breukelen.

The principal floor gives access to a vestibule separated by a draught-porch with large glazed lights. The walls above a white marble wainscoting are provided with a plastered, and currently grey-painted panel division, and at the transition to the ceiling detailed with a mirror arch form, provided with a simple soffit moulding.

To the left of the corridor the front room, entirely provided with wall paintings depicting landscapes (Uppink, 1812) applied above a wainscoting painted in light colours. The paintings are divided on the long walls by means of moulded frames into three equal parts, so that these also run over the side door. The stucco ceiling with corniced moulding has a decoration in a Robert Adam-like colour scheme (pastel pink in combination with white) with carefully worked out acanthus and laurel leaf motifs and a central rosette, which possibly date from a late eighteenth-century alteration. The fireplace arrangement with very simple grey marble mantel and richly decorated breast (with tall rectangular mirror in gilded frame and gold-coloured grisaille with putti against a black background) connects with this. Above the double doors to the rear room a comparable panel painting, whereby putti depict a sacrificial feast.

In the rear room also landscapes by Uppink, whereby the paintings are also applied over the doors to the front room. Between the two windows a pier mirror, with gilded frame and at the bottom a carved relief with Roman-looking figures.

On the first storey in the front house there is a large space, in which the beam layer is exposed. The fireplace arrangement in the front part, originally the front room, is very simply executed. Via the landing one reaches the 'hall', articulated by Ionic fluted pilasters and entirely provided with paintings depicting mythological representations around Aeneas and Dido (signed and dated 1736, Elliger). The paintings are set in mirror arch-shaped frames, also applied for the mirror on the fireplace breast on the black-and-white marble fireplace mantel with simple, eighteenth-century forms. The ceiling in this hall is also provided with a double mirror arch-shaped main motif, detailed with laurel bands, c. 1800.

The pier mirror, which is crowned by a female head and garlands, is, given the busy combination of motifs, possibly a late nineteenth-century interpretation of older ornamentation. The former study has painted landscapes dated 1812 (Uppink). The music room has similar representations.

According to Sijmons's design, in 1949 a void was created at the rear of the front house in which a fireplace with a large tapering chimney shaft as a focal point.

The roof was probably renewed in 1949 following the pattern of the old one. Behind the hoist door in the raised roof the original hoist wheel.

Valuation

Originally a 17th-century canal house with associated interior, of general importance from a cultural-historical and architectural-historical point of view as a well and soundly preserved dwelling house from the seventeenth century with later alterations, because of the architectural appearance of the front facade and the characteristic structure of the building including the mid-twentieth-century adaptations, as well as because of the art-historical value of the interior elements present in the building including a large number of painted wallpapers from the late eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth century.